FBI Begins Setting Up Formal Interviews in Clinton Email Case

Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a round table discussion at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, March 24, 2016.

Federal prosecutors investigating Hillary Clinton’s email case have begun arranging formal interviews with her longtime aides, according to a report.

The LA Times, citing anonymous sources, reports that dates have not yet been set for the interviews, but the move indicates that the federal inquiry into the former Secretary of State’s handling of her private email server is nearing its close.

“The interviews are critical to understand the volume of information they have accumulated,” James McJunkin, former head of the FBI’s Washington field office, told the LA Times. “They are likely nearing the end of the investigation and the agents need to interview these people to put the information in context. They will then spend time aligning these statements with other information, emails, classified documents, etc., to determine whether there is a prosecutable case.”

As the Washington Post reported in early March, any criminal charges would go through Attorney General Loretta Lynch. In February, she told Congress of the email inquiry, “That matter is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents, as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they’ll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate…We will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as how to best handle it.”